Under the Blue Gum Tree: Haemul Pajeon (Korean Seafood Pancake)
At the moment, I'm doing okay because I'm back running so burn off a fair few calories each week. I eat a pretty balanced diet (and probably a few more snacks than I should) but my weight is stable. But in the not-too-distant, I will have to hang my running shoes up for a while and go back to watching what I eat.
Perusing the Guardian website last weekend, I happened across Felicity Cloake's Reader Recipe Swap on the 5:2. All the 'diet' food sounded just great. but when I noticed that the winning recipe was submitted by Clare from Under the Blue Gum Tree, I knew I had to try it out because it would be a good one.
I 'met' Clare via Twitter through our shared love of Dan Lepard's books when I was doing the 366 Recipe Challenge. Clare has challenged herself to do 5:2 this year and loves how it fits into her lifestyle. Personally, I'd find the idea of skipping breakfast really hard to do some days but if it would help me drop the last half stone I want to shift once I can't run any more then I'm game for a go at this.
So tonight, having run seven miles, I rewarded myself with the whole of Clare's pancake as it's only 502 calories (the run burned nearly 900). And quite frankly I'm stuffed to the gills. I was actually teetering on fullness after the first half, but valiantly soldiered on as there was nobody around to finish the rest*. I could definitely see this working as something for me to take to work for lunch if I ever do 5:2.Because I was a numpty and used up my peppers in veggie chilli earlier this week, I used half a diced courgette instead. Eating so much green stuff made me feel even more healthy and much less guilty about the caramel egg I scoffed when my run was done.
You can find the recipe here.
*Quite a big bite of the elephant tonight
A Waddle of Oreo Penguin Cupcakes
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| Don't eat us, we're too cute! |
The cakes in question are a belated birthday cake gift to the questioner 'M' who I work with. Despite FaceAche telling me it was his birthday, I still forgot so promised he could choose what cake I would make to take into work this week. He emailed me a link to a page about cupcake decorating from Bored Panda* and requested a waddle of penguins. Well one, but you can't make just one penguin as he'd be lonely.
Given that it still feels like the middle of winter in the UK, despite it being April 7th, I duly accepted the challenge and spent today intermittently working on my little army.
The original recipe comes from the My Feelings Taste Like Cupcakes blog by Anna. Her post about the trials and tribulations of working with oreos is entertaining and certainly made my attempt a whole world easier.
I'm guessing that pretty much all Americans have a knack for twisting the tops off of oreos successfully. I'm so weedy that I couldn't even manage to do one - but a sharp knife worked wonders. I also rather prudently (well mostly because oreos are flipping expensive) separated the ones for the faces and made the wings before making the crushed oreos for the base and filling so that I could use the broken bits rather than ending up with a pile of wasted wings. A sharp knife definitely helps and I found using my fingers as a cutting guide meant mostly clean even breaks.
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| I'm ready for my close up |
Anyhoo onto the techie bit. As Anna doesn't detail how to make the cupcakes because she wasn't happy with the recipe she used for the cake bit, I chose to use my favourite vanilla cupcake recipe from the 366 Recipe Challenge - a Dan Lepard one. Partly because it is pretty much the same as the one I used to use pre-challenge and partly because it has to be my favourite post from the challenge. (Vanilla cupcakes are quite popular on the blog as the post about Mary Berry's cupcakes has had a whopping 20,000+ views since I posted it in March 2012.)
Because the Lepard recipe makes a smaller quantity of cakes, I got 10 for my troubles so I'll detail the steps here. Anna's post has a great set of pictures on how to make and assemble the cakes. For me, it took enough patience to decorate the things without remembering to photograph every step!
Makes 10 cupcakes
- 2 packets oreos (the double stuffed ones are easiest to work with)
- 1 orange Starburst (the recipe gets expensive if you can only find family sized packs!)
- 20 eyes - googly, made from sugar paste or bought edible ones
- Muffin tin lined with ten paper cases
- 10 oreo halves minus the cream (equivalent of - use the odds and ends from making the wings)
- 50g butter
- 125g very soft, unsalted butter
- 125g caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla essence
- 150g plain flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- pinch of table salt
- 125g butter
- 60g cream cheese
- 225g icing sugar
- 2tsp vanilla essence
- 30ml double cream
- 6 oreo halves minus the cream (equivalent of - use the odds and ends from making the wings)
- 225g icing sugar
- 125g marshmallow fluff
2, To make the base, split five oreos in half and remove the cream. Place in a plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin until fine crumbs. Melt the butter and stir in the oreos. Put a tablespoonful of mixture into the base of each cupcake case and flatten down. Bake at 160c/140c fan for five minutes. Remove and increase the oven temperature to 180c/160c fan.
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| A veritable waddle of ping-wings |
4, Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden and firm to the touch. To stop the cakes peaking, put a baking sheet on the shelf above the muffin tin. Remove and leave to cool.
5, Make the filling by beating the butter, cheese, cream and vanilla essence together. Beat in the icing sugar until well combined. Remove three tablespoonfuls into a small bowl. Crush the oreos and then stir through the filling in the small bowl. Core the cupcakes and pipe filling into each, replacing the core on the top.
6, Add the marshmallow fluff to the remaining filling from step five (the stuff without the crushed oreos in) and beat until well combined then whisk in the icing sugar until it forms a stiff, pipeable mixture.
7, Put the Starburst on a microwaveable plate and heat for fifteen seconds. Move it quickly to a clean work surface then roll flat with a rolling pin and cut small triangles to make the beaks.
8, Finally assemble the cakes by piping a plain swirl of topping onto the cake then adding the wings, faces and beaks. Because it's tough to get a clean split on the faces, I took Anna's advice and spread a little of the topping on each face - it helped stick the eyes and the beak too.
Et voila. Cupcakes that are too cute to eat!
* I had seen this post before - check out my version of the Cookie Monster Cupcakes
The Boy Who Bakes' Red Velvet Cake
For every detractor of social media, you'll find a hundred people who love it. I'm definitely in the "Love It" camp. Sure it's taken me a while to find my spiritual home, but now I've taken up residence in the Twittersphere, I think I'm there to stay.
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| Elegantly sliced by my work colleagues |
But Twitter is home to the very hippest of my circle of friends and family and also home to my adopted Twitter family. I quite can't remember how my Twitter family came about but through a chain of Tweets, I was "adopted" by Paul, Kate, Maria and Dicky. Like any family we may not "get together" for ages but whenever we do it's either a riot of belly laughs or an outpouring of love and support that sometimes I don't even get from my real-world family.
Despite having never met in real-life, they all generously sponsored me running the Bath Half last year. And getting to the point of this post I recently received an ace parcel from Dicky. He had a spare copy of The Boy Who Bakes and asked if anyone wanted it. I offered to give it a good home and to pay the postage. A little while later, the book arrived accompanied by two packs of Percy Pig sweets for Miss A. Dicky wouldn't take any payment for the postage and didn't put a return address on the package so I couldn't send him any cake (Bunders, I would have if I could have ;-)) so I made a cake for the charity bake sale at work instead.
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| Ready for the oven |
This time the bake was successful although my attempt to get ahead with the icing went awry. I made the sugar and butter part the day before and after a late night out at Book Club, I decided to hand beat in the cream cheese and ice the cake at gone midnight. The icing went lumpy - I probably should've beat the butter cream with the mixer again before adding the cream cheese - which detracted from the decoration but it still tasted good - and got rave reviews from my normal cake testers as well as adding to my growing army of admirers.
Thank you again Dicky. You've made lots of people very happy x
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| Slightly lumpy icing |
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| I love post like this |
Dan Lepard's Cinnamon Honey Fruit Cake
Labels:
baking,
cake,
Christmas,
Dan Lepard,
fruit
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| Decorated by my beautiful, two-year-old assistant |
When she returned to 'proper work', we stopped having a family Christmas cake so a few years ago, I decided to resurrect the tradition. And what a minefield it's been. First off, there's my grandfather who hates marzipan and icing. He'd really like a Dundee cake. Suggesting he remove the icing and marzipan from the cake and just eat the middle is tantamount to suggesting he eat cranberry sauce with his turkey. For the record, he doesn't like Christmas pudding either.
Then there are members of the family who only like the marzipan and icing bit. I figured a bit of Jack and Mrs Sprat logic might work here with my grandfather eating the cake, the others eating his discarded marzipan - but no, that's not good enough because the cake taints the marzipan with dried fruit flavour.
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| That blue-iced cake |
That year I also decided to make a yule log as a sop to the non-fruit cake lovers. This went down really well until the following year when I was trying to decide between fruit cake and chocolate and my mother announced she'd also be making a Stollen. I asked why. There are never more than five adults present on Christmas day in my family any more (sad times). With the requisite mince pies and Christmas pudding, this seemed a little excessive. So I ended up baking neither and my mother's Stollen was so cement-like, you could have used it as a door stop.
This year, with my girl and her love of cooking, I decided to make a proper cake again, and chose Dan Lepard's Caramel Christmas cake. It was a behemoth of a cake, smelt amazing and took forever to cook. But the finished cake felt really dry. Rather than feeding it for weeks on end, I decided to let people try it with a view of making a second for Christmas. Apparently, it was the best fruit cake the testers had ever tasted. Great!
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| The un-iced version of the Cinnamon Honey Cake |
To save on the calories and flying in the face of arguments over how much icing and marzipan should be on a cake, I went for a simple top-iced cake and opted to use Dan's Brandy Butter Frosting which was great for Miss A to swirl across the top and then decorate all by herself.
As always, Dan's recipes are real winners. Yes, I've left this post too late for you to make them for Christmas, but the Cinnamon Honey Fruit Cake is a great cake for any time of the year.
Chilli and Almond Biscuits
Labels:
baking,
biscuits,
cheese,
Christmas,
Dan Lepard,
FBCookieSwap,
nuts
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| Hot stuff! |
I must refocus myself for the New Year and include this as part of my action plan for 2013. Assuming that The World doesn't end on 21st December. And if it does, I would quite like it if The World would be so kind as to wait to implode until I've been out and had my birthday lunch.
Anyhow, onto the biscuits. This is a partner post for a post that's due to appear over on the 366 Recipe Challenge. I know that technically finished back in September, but I really wanted to take part in the Food Blogger Cookie Swap this year. And to take part, you had to have a blog that had been in operation since before 15th August 2012. Small Bites was a little too new to allow me to participate so I used my old blog for qualification and will do lots of linkying between these two posts on Dec 12th - the official 'recipe reveal' date.
Because I am particularly indecisive, I opted to bake three kinds of cookies and ask my work colleagues to vote which were their favourites. True to form, they picked the chocolate ones, but my favourites were these delicious little savouries, courtesy of Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet.
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| Ready for the off |
With copious amounts of cheese and nuts, how could these be anything other than amazeballs? I ended up sending a few to each of my Cookie Swap buddies as a bonus. And they appeared to go down well even though they're not the most robust of biscuits for surviving transport by Royal Mail. Feedback from work colleagues included 'can I have the recipe for your rather excellent chilli biscuits?' and 'mmmm...hot stuff' I trust that particular person was referring to the food!
With Christmas coming up, they would also be great with a glass of wine if you have non-fussy visitors. And you can make the dough in advance and chill it for a few days before you bake it, allowing you to show off for unexpected guests. The only thing I found was that the chilli flavour was far more intense in the 'mature' ones.
Luckily, this is one of those recipes that was first published via the Guardian so if you don't own a copy of Short and Sweet, you can find it here.
Chocolate and Cherry Bagels. Or Buns.
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| Decadent bagels for breakfast |
So whilst I had a little navel-gazing time last night, I thought about why I might be perceived that way. And the only thing I can put it down to is that I am quite good at getting things done. I'm in no way perfect. I often leave things hanging open-ended. Like the pile of filing that is on the floor next to my chair as I type. I should be sorting it into a folder rather than blogging. But in about twenty minutes when I've finished typing, I'm most likely to step over it and go and do something else like prepping my stuff for work in the morning. I will come back to it. But because filing doesn't light my fire, I will put it off until I'm really bored.
Whereas something like baking, I will make time for whenever I absolutely can. Which is why on Friday, I was multi-tasking by speaking to a journo about the 366 Recipe Challenge whilst kneading the dough for my bagels. She asked that same question everyone asks about the challenge. "How did you find time to do it?" I responded "By multi-tasking, actually, I'm kneading bagels while we talk because the only free time I have today is while Miss A is napping". I had my Crackberry nearby too because although we finish at 12pm on Fridays, I have a big project going live tomorrow and I wanted to monitor any unforeseen disasters in the final hours of testing.
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| Nice buns |
I'd made my own bagels using a Dan Lepard recipe for the 366 Recipe Challenge and really enjoyed the process. Because I am genuinely tight for time, I've not made them from scratch again since, but Miss A and I ritually eat bagels on Saturday and Sunday mornings for our breakfast. We split one (proper ones, not the plasticky New York Bagel ones). She has hers with chocolate Philly and banana and strawberries. I have mine with peanut butter and banana. But this weekend, I decided to do something a little different and the chocolate and cherry bagels were born.
The dough I made on my last attempt was really hard to work with so after a little research, I decided to use my own dough recipe and use a little oil in the hope of smoothing the dough and making it more elasticky. Plus I eschewed Dan's 10-second knead method and went for a full ten-minute work out seeing as I was on the phone.
For decadence, I added Waitrose chocolate chunks (other brands are available) and dried sour cherries. But then I got cold feet when it got to poaching. I was worried that the chocolate would melt in the boiling water and so I used half of the dough to make buns and the rest for the bagels. Luckily, both worked and both went down well with my chief taste-tester. Two days later, they're also great lightly toasted and slathered with unsalted butter. Perfect winter fodder. I also intend to bake these again in a few weeks using blueberries, white chocolate and a touch of mixed spice. I love that one dough recipe gives the two options. And you could pop it into a loaf tin and have a great slicing loaf too.
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| Bagels - pre glaze |
Recipe - makes either eight bagels or eight buns
- 450g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
- 7g sachet of easy bake yeast
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp caster sugar
- 275ml water (two parts iced to one part boiling, mixed)
- 2 tsp vegetable oil
- 75g dark chocolate chunks (I use Waitrose as they tend to stand up better to hot temperatures)
- 75g dried sour cherries
- 2tbsp malt extract or dark brown sugar for poaching if making bagels (I used sugar this time but think malt extract works better and is less streaky)
- 25g caster sugar for the glaze
- Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl. Mix in the yeast, sugar and salt. Mix the water and oil together and then pour into the flour mixture. Stir until it starts to form a dough then use your hands to bring it together into a ball. Place onto a clean, flour dusted worktop and knead for ten minutes until smooth and elastic.
- Place into a clean, lightly oiled bowl. Cover and leave for thirty minutes. Turn out onto the floured work surface, knead briefly for a minute or two then return to the bowl for another thirty minutes.
- Work the chocolate and cherries through the dough then cut into eight even pieces. Mould into balls, taking care to poke the cherries and chocolate slightly under the surface of the dough - this stops them burning when they cook. Place on a lightly floured tray and leave to rise for another thirty minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350F/180c/160 fan/Gas 4 whilst the dough is proving.
- For bagels: Put the malt extract or brown sugar into a large saucepan filled with water. Bring to the boil.
- Using the handle of a clean wooden spoon, poke a hole through the middle of each dough ball and stretch until roughly the size of an old fifty pence piece. Drop the bagels carefully into the water, two at a time and poach for thirty seconds each side. Remove and place on the baking tray.
- For buns: I usually bake my buns in a smallish roasting tin with a two-inch side or in my springform cake tin. I pack them quite close together so they smoosh together when baking and pull apart nicely.
- To Finish: Bake the bagels or buns for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.
- Just before the end of the cooking time, mix the sugar for the glaze with 2tbsp water in a small saucepan and then heat until the sugar is dissolved. When you remove the buns or bagels from the oven, quickly brush the tops with the glaze before leaving to cool.
Cookie Monster Cupcakes
Since finishing my last blog, the one question I keep getting asked is "How did you find the time to do it all?" People who don't know me assume that I don't work or have a retinue of helpers to free me up some time to cook and blog.
But the honest answer is either "I just don't know" or "If you really want to do something, you make time". Which is why I'm sat here at just after 6am on a Saturday about to waffle on about some cupcakes I made a few weeks ago. I've always been a poor sleeper and regularly join the lovely HelsWats in the #twoamclub on Twitter. This morning is no different and so faced with the choice of further decluttering of my life or writing about cake, the cake won.
It's also why my blogging antics will be much less frequent now. The 366 Recipe Challenge was, quite frankly, exhausting. For a year, every spare moment was spent thinking about food, eating food or writing about food. Or thinking about writing about food. It paid off because the blog has now had over 60,000 page views which is awesome. But besides neglecting the housework, I also had to let many other things in my life slide away. Most importantly spending time with people that I love and doing the things that I love.
Before anyone goes running off to ring ChildLine, of course I didn't neglect Miss A. Hopefully the blog is testimony to my intent and her involvement in it. But I have recently had someone who had the temerity to imply that I was a bad mother for putting her into nursery so I could work hard to keep a roof over her head. I really must stop being so sensitive on this issue. My life is ruled by a happy, healthy, loving, well rounded child. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
But in order to have a happy, healthy, well-rounded child, she needs to have a role model to emulate. This is something I've only recently realised. How can she grow up to form healthy relationships if she sees a mother who has no life of her own. As a child growing up with a single mother, my mum never went out anywhere. Yes, she had friends and interests and her own business, and maybe it is a sign of the times we lived in then, but I don't remember her going out for an evening out until I was ten.
Consequently, as an adult, I have spent years fighting a fear of new places and people. Situations like this fill me with fear and I have been known in the past to even eschew nights out with some of my oldest friends because I'm just too plain nervous of the situation.
One of the best things to come out of my blogging year was biting the bullet and going to cake club. It made me realise that actually, I'm missing out on a lot of enjoyment in life by hiding away each evening, writing a blog. Even when I run, I'm too much of a wuss to go to running club in case 'nobody speaks to me' (a favourite childhood excuse for not going to dance class or swimming club) so I run by myself at 5am, making the excuse that it's the only time I can fit it in to my busy life.
But I don't want my daughter to grow up with this same insecurity and so I'm pushing my own boundaries to try and find a healthy balance and become a role model. A happy toddler needs a happy mummy. And this personal challenge is turning out to be quite a pleasant mouthful of elephant to swallow.
Anyway, what has this got to do with Cookie Monster cupcakes, I hear you ask? A few weeks ago, I went on a night out with work. This is something that would ordinarily have me running for the hills, or at the very least making the excuse that "I'm washing my hair that night". But I decided it was time to bite the bullet and go out. Even if it meant I was the only female in a group of 16. And an enjoyable night it was too. If a little messy.
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| The barman lining up the now infamous cocktails |
After a fair bit of alcohol was consumed, we had a couple of rounds of the now legendary Cookie Monster shots. For the uninitiated, these consist of Kahlua, Chambord and Baileys. And if you happen to drink at SevenShed in Bristol, you get a flaming Sambucca in the saucer as well. Lethal! When I finally got over my hangover (about a week later - the perils of being over thirty) I remembered that Cookie Monster cupcakes were on my to-do-list for the 366 Recipe Challenge, but I'd never found the time to do them. And so it seemed to be the right time to give them a go.
There are many different methods for making them on the interweb, but I couldn't find one that appealed so just made up my own recipe. And the two chief taste-testers (Miss A and my boss) gave them the thumbs up.
I started with a basic pound cake recipe for the cupcakes, substituting 40g of flour for cocoa and baked this into cupcakes. The domed head was then created from cake-pop mixture - a combination of crumbled cake and cream cheese. They need to be solid to hold the cookies.
Some recipes then use dyed coconut for the fur but as I was road-testing these for my godson who can't eat coconut, I went for a buttercream topping, piped using my grass nozzle. Finally, because I was a total numpty and forgot to buy cookies, I had to make an emergency batch of cookies to complete the cakes. Luckily, as part of the old blog, I tried the best ever cookie recipe by Sadia, one of my lovely Twitter friends. You can find her recipe here. I used half the quantities and made them the size of an old 50p piece (for those of you old enough to remember). This left me with plenty of spares. For....erm...quality assurance purposes.
Et voila. Cookie Monster cupcakes!
For the cakes - makes 6-8 depending on the size of your cases
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| Pre-decoration. They could work as frogs too. |
- 250g softened butter
- 250g caster sugar
- 4 medium eggs
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- pinch of table salt
- 210g plain flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 40g cocoa powder
For the topping
- 50g full fat cream cheese
- 250g icing sugar
- 80g softened butter
- 1tbsp milk
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- blue gel food colouring
- black icing (I used a tube of premade icing I had lurking in the cupboard) or black gel food colouring
- giant white chocolate buttons
- mini cookies
- Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan. Line a muffin tin with paper muffin cases. You will need about twelve to sixteen cakes. Half are used to make the domes for the heads.
- Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Incorporate the eggs one at a time. Mix in the vanilla extract. Sift in the flour, cocoa, salt and baking powder and then mix until you have a nice even batter.
- Half fill the muffin cases. You may need to bake in two batches if you only have one tray. Bake for 20-25 minutes until risen and springy to the touch. Leave to go completely cold.
- Pick the worst looking cupcakes (about half of mine would normally be classed as disasters) and crumble them into a clean bowl. Mix in the cream cheese until you have a stiff, mouldable mixture. Divide into six to eight pieces (depending on how many cakes you kept) then shape into domes the same size as the cake. Place on a plate and chill for thirty minutes.
- Meanwhile, make the buttercream by mixing the butter and icing sugar together with an electric mixer until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the milk and vanilla extract and beat until light and fluffy. Tint with enough blue gel food colouring (the liquid stuff is no good as it makes it runny) until you have your desired shade.
- To assemble, place one of the domes on top of each cupcake. Create two slits near the back of the dome and place a chocolate button in each. Add eye detail with the black icing. Cut a slit in the front of the dome to make the mouth shape. It needs to be big enough to hold a cookie, but not so big that the cookie falls out.
- Using the blue buttercream and a piping bag fitted with a grass nozzle, pipe fur on to the cake then finish with a cookie in the slit for the mouth.
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